


Flowers Have a Language (Let's Pretend I'm Fluent)

by Soulb0und



Category: Neko no Ongaeshi | The Cat Returns
Genre: F/M, flowershop au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-09-01 10:28:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8620951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soulb0und/pseuds/Soulb0und
Summary: Flower-shop AUIn which Haru owns a flower-shop, and Baron is just passing by most days.No, really.





	1. La Vie en Rose

Haru worked the desk of the Crossroads Flowershop everyday of the year, excepting Christmas day and two weekends in the fall. She'd seen all kinds of people come through her humble shop. She’d seen lovers, children, parents, friends, family, and people in mourning. She even had a fifty year old getting flowers for his son’s wedding and doing his damn best to convince her to come home with him. She'd never seen someone come in this many times with this bad taste.

Haru eyed the gentleman from over the top of her book. This was the third time he’d come in this month. His orange hair was gelled away from his face, and he was dressed smartly in light colors. Last week he had been dressed in a cream suit, and today he was dressed in a similar style but in mint, with a orange tie. 

Every time the man came, he spent almost a full hour wandering the shop, looking over the selection. Finally he would settle on whatever arrangement she had ‘made’ last.

They weren’t even really arrangements, it was just the vase she put the flowers that didn’t fit into any of her finished arrangements in. She had tried moving the vase around the store, underneath the tables in the aisle, behind the arrangements in the fridge. Never fail, the man gravitated to the most hideous 'arrangement' in the store. 

Haru helped an older man with an arrangement of red roses and white dahlias. When she looked back up, the gentleman had come up to the till with her scrap pile, and she did her best to plaster a pained smile. Haru long ago resolved to leave him to his purchase and not mention it. She focused on ringing up his purchase, coming up with a price off the top of head. She made sure it was cheap, at least. He was technically doing her a favor here, after all. Haru jotted down the total and glanced back up only to stop at the monstrosity he had picked out.

“Who do you hate so much?” Haru blurted out and colored. So much for not mentioning it. The man startled, his gloved hands jerking back from the petal he had been rubbing.

“I beg your pardon?” He actually reared back, and Haru took the moment to collect herself.

“The..uh..bouquet? It’s hideous. Like ridiculously hideous. I keep hiding it and you keep finding it. So who are you trying to fulfill the exact bare minimum of societal expectations for?” Haru leaned herself more fully over the counter and put her face in her hand. She smiled and with her other hand motioned for him to begin his story.

Instead he snatched back the mess of color and wet petal, cradling it to his chest like it was something precious. “I assure you miss, it really doesn’t look that bad! I think it’s quite good. Why would you hide such talent? Surely if it was put in a more formal vase or tied up with ribbon-” The ginger was cut off as Haru burst out laughing. His brows furrowed further and further as she tried to stifle her giggle-fest.

After a few more contained snickers, he reached for her hand and patted it consolingly. “It really isn’t all that bad. I see every morning how much effort you put into these pieces and I must say I’m very impressed! I’m very surprised no one else sees the inner beauty of something with love poured into it. This one really has the most harmony for the amount of species put in-”

Haru looked at him incredulously. “You’re impressed by the harmony in my scrap pile?” The man froze, and Haru could see the beginnings of a blush on his cheeks.

“Yes, your scrap pile is very ah…that is to say its….that and the other part make it very…” He looked up at her helplessly, blush fully working its way to his ears and neck. Haru reached over and pulled the vase from his unresisting hands. He was looking at her with an increasing sense of dismay. “But you spend so much time on it every morning!” He added weakly.

Haru tilted her head. “So you watch me open in the mornings?” The man spluttered and her smiled widened into a grin.

“Its on my way to work!”

“You go into work at five in the morning?”

He wilted.

Haru took pity on the man, and stuck out her hand. “Haru Yoshioka.”

He looked up and tentatively shook her hand. “Humbert von Gikkingen. But my friends call me Baron.”

Haru pulled her hand from his and rifled around in the drawer next to the till. She pulled out a scrap of paper and a pen and started scribbling. “You know, Baron, there are other ways to ask for a girl’s number.” She handed him the scrap of paper and tossed him a smile as she edged her way out from behind the counter, taking the scrap pile with her. She brushed past him as she went, and his hands automatically reached to steady her, but she was already making her way to the back of the shop.

Baron blinked after her for a beat, then looked down at her writing. A blinding smile overcame his face, and he tucked the paper into his breast pocket, and exited the shop.


	2. Sunflowers in spring, they're just like you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Muta and Toto make an appearance.

It wasn’t the first of her strange experiences that week.

Opening the shop was supremely awful the first few times she did it. Haru was not naturally a morning person, but it was, in the beginning, a necessary evil. She couldn’t exactly say she deeply enjoyed the process of waking up even now, years after she had adapted her body to it. The temptation to sink back into bed was at an all time high when one woke before the sun rose. It took waking up at four in the morning in order for the shop to be open at eight.

Haru resisted the urge to sleepily rub her eyes as she unlocked the door to the shop. Tsuge fussed with the delivery van behind her, and swept out yesterday’s petals. Still half-way asleep, the two began the process of sorting and arranging both custom and display pieces for the day. Tsuge settled down to dethorn roses while Haru set up the till and the rest of the shop to start the day. 

They both relaxed into familiar banter, as Haru pulled bundles of flowers out of buckets and they cut off the dead ends on the stems. Tsuge was big enough that the space behind the counter was a little cramped whenever they did this, but Haru didn’t really mind knocking elbows, and she didn’t think Tsuge did either. The whole flower-shop was like that, really. Small amount of space to display, so they had to be efficient with what they had. Refrigerators lined one side for the more delicate flowers, and the wall behind the counter was covered in ribbons and cards and different kinds of wrapping paper. There was only one divider table in the middle of the shop, but by the time she and Tsuge had finished it was piled high enough you couldn’t see if anyone was on the other side, and often had to edge around to reach the counter in the back. But it gave off a friendly enough feeling. Cozy instead of cramped. 

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed two men camped out at the cafe across the street.

They were...eye-catching. One was enormous, not only in height but in weight. He was sitting on the edge of his seat, and whenever she went to the front of the shop to put out the display pieces, he made to rise, only to sink back down when she didn’t flash the open sign. He seemed intense and unsubtle, but she had seen the same from several husbands and boyfriends who wanted to impress or show appreciation. No, it was the companion that made this man more unusual. Thin where the other was fat, and dark where the other was light, the darker man was dressed in a business suit, and repeatedly distracted the other by tossing bits of his pastry and seeming to threaten pouring his coffee on him.

Eventually it escalated to the point where the larger man flushed a heavy red and began to shout insults she couldn’t hear through the door of the shop. The larger man mimed grabbing the smaller one and giving him a swirly, while the smaller circled around him, delighted and egging him on. Haru briefly considered the merits of not even opening the shop until the two of them left, in order to both protect the flowers and not end up on the news with alongside the brawl.

Tsuge brushed past her, unlocked the doors and pushed out a display cart. He poked his head back in. “Hey, coffee run coming up, want anything?” he asked, with the air of someone who was genuinely trying to be helpful and was completely oblivious to what he had just done.

“No,” Haru said morosely, watching as the two causing a scene across the street immediately ceased at the sound of the bell. One of the cafe workers from behind the pair shot her a sympathetic glance as they began trying to subtly rush through paying the bill and bicker at the same time. Haru made her way behind the counter and tried her best to look responsible and busy instead of curious and anxious, but she was sure she mostly looked under caffeinated and expectant.

The larger of the two arrived seconds before the other, and slammed his hands on the counter. Her head barely reached his biceps, and someone could fit three of her in the space he took up. The other man attempted to quietly closed the door around him, but it jumped forward and managed to stub his toe and scuff his shoe, and Haru did her best to pretend she didn’t see him hop on one foot and mouth swear-words to himself. 

His friend had no such reservations. He turned towards the door. “Rocks for brains, knock it off. Tryin’ to make a halfway decent first impression here.”

“Well, if you’re aiming so high as halfway, I hate to be the one to tell you, but your face-” 

“-is already having to compensate for yours, I know.” He turned back to Haru while the darker man made an aggravated noise and nursed his hurt foot. He stuck out a broad palm and grinned in a manner Haru was sure was meant to come across as friendly but overshot on the amount of teeth shown and undershot on the whole of the rest of the friendly part of the expression. “Muta, friend of your new boyfriend. Nice little shop. Especially love the door. It always do that or just have good taste?”

Haru leaned around and scowled at the door. “It’s picky. It takes offense to plenty of things. You wouldn’t happen to have anything against the color green, would you?” 

“No?”

“Then unless you have any stone jewelry, I couldn’t tell you.” Haru turned back to Muta. “What can I help you with? Did Baron send you?” 

“Actually,” Muta grinned and managed to look less like his face wanted to kill him for trying to perform social niceties. “Our reasons for coming are fifty percent we wanted to introduce ourselves to our friends new person, fifty percent we wanted to tease our friend and have him know we brought his new person into it so we skip straight past the awkward nonsense phase.”  
He pointed back to his friend again. “That’s Toto, by the way. He also responds to-”

“He responds to Toto.” Toto said firmly. “Muta, on the other hand, responds to all kinds of fun names. Usually he responds with threats of violence.” Toto paused. “My bad. Always. He always responds with threats of violence.”

“Not true. Remember that time I almost drowned after winning the eating contest at that lake?”

“Ah, yes. Further revision required. With the exception of one singular time, during which he was actively dying, he always responds with threats of violence.”

Haru snorted. She had to admit, they were entertaining.

Muta seemed more relaxed as well, like following his friend’s banter was preventing his face from fake-smiling itself into oblivion. 

Toto leaned under Muta’s arms (which were still almost boxing Haru in on her counter), and gave her a winning smile. He had a better game-face, but Haru could see the tightness around his eyes as he elbowed his partner. Muta graciously leaned back to eyeball Haru’s price markers above the counter. 

“What we’re trying to do, miss, is haze a dear friend by interacting with the girl it took him a little over a month to have an actual conversation with.” Toto stated, and tossed her a winning smile. Haru rolled her eyes, but found herself reluctantly endeared. 

“How embarrassing are we talking here? I’m not going to do anything traumatizing. He seemed like a nice guy.” 

Muta elbowed Toto back again. “I need a bouquet that says ‘congratulations on getting your shit together for once’. As passive-aggressive as possible, and please wrap it in the stuff that says the shop name.” He leaned back to look down at Toto. “Am I forgetting anything?”

“Basic human decency? Other than that nothing comes to mind.” Toto glanced at Haru out of the corner of his eye and exaggeratedly mouthed ‘I’m sorry’. Haru ignored him.

“Flower arrangements don’t usually have full sentence meanings like that. Each flower species has a few possible meanings and you string them together from context. You could put together a bunch that meant ‘congrats’ and a few that mean insincere, or some that have insults?” Haru leaned down and pulled out a notebook and pencil from under the counter.

“Insults are good, but I don’t want it to go too far. It’s for a friend, so not irredeemably awful. Just enough he knows we’re pulling his chain.”

“So, some insults, smattering of praise, and a few friendship representing pieces to round it all out?” Haru hummed, and hunched down over her notebook, scribbling out some ideas for combinations that would send across the right meaning while hopefully not looking like a scrap pile. Although that was a thought for another way the boy’s little prank could go. But that might be better saved for another time...

“Sounds good to me. Really, the most important thing is he knows we came here and introduced ourselves.” Muta grinned at her again. “Let him come to his own conclusions.”

Tsuge tapped twice on the door before toeing it open and wandering in to the backroom, nodding once to Haru along the way. Muta shook her hand, Toto appraised her sketched out ideas, and she pulled out some examples of what the flowers she wanted to use looked like from a handy little book Hiromi had bought her for her birthday when she had first started. They agreed on one of her designs, and headed out. She waved as they left.

As they were leaving, Haru privately thought she had had worse starts to her day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think Muta would be a lot happier if he hadn't been on the run most of his life. He's gonna be less grumpy, but he's also more inclined to make trouble because he's never gotten caught.  
> Toto is more of a night-owl, because when I first watched the movie as a kid I mistook him coming awake at the sunset to only being awake at night. Disproved by the end of the movie, but still.  
> They both one hundred percent nudge Baron into doing absolute nonsense when he isn't sticking his nose into other people's business.  
> Title of this chapter comes from 'Sunflower' by Alice Peacock  
> Edited because I hated the last chapter so much it stalled me from writing until I fixed it. Now I feel better!

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who finally got an AO3 account. (Spoiler alert: It's me!)  
> In Baron's defense, I headcannon him as color-blind.   
> Find me on tumblr, fanartdork.tumblr.com


End file.
